Twan shares that he read JM Coetzee: A Life in Writing by JC Kannemeyer and Dana Snyman’s The Long Way Home: A Journey Through South Africa. He comments on Kannemeyer’s thorough excavation of Coetzee’s life and the subsequent examination of how much of his writing is autobiographical, saying that it “corrects the misconceptions that have obscured this enigmatic, private writer, misconceptions that have affected how his novels were analysed.” On The Long Way Home Twan said that “Snyman’s writing in this slim volume is straightforward and understated, it is unsentimental but moving.”

Another local book was mentioned by British author Andrew Miller, who read Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room, saying that “There are definite echoes of Galgut’s great compatriot, JM Coetzee.”

This six-hundred-page long-awaited biography of J.M. Coetzee was published this year in Afrikaans and English. Kannemeyer is one of South Africa’s eminent biographers. Coetzee gave him extensive access to his papers, allowed Kannemeyer to conduct a series of interviews with him, occasionally pointing him to friends and former colleagues and relatives he should speak to.